Upma – Pour, Stir and Eat

Crazy weekday morning! No time to make breakfast! Cornflakes, muesli, ready-to-cook mixes, bread butter! Breakfast in office!

Cooking a healthy, homemade, filling breakfast becomes a challenge most of the times. And when you know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day it becomes all the more important to serve a wholesome breakfast.

Upma is one such healthy and wholesome breakfast that we can have but preparing upma in the morning might become a bit of a challenge. One shortcut that we know is to keep the rawa (semolina) roasted so that we do not spend time roasting it in the busy morning schedule. Let us take a few leaps and prepare a make-ahead breakfast.

The idea struck me on a flight when the air hostess served upma as a ready-to-cook meal in a bowl. Pour hot water, wait for a couple of minutes and your breakfast is ready.
Let us prepare the same at home.

Gather the ingredients:

• Roasted rawa – 2 cups
• Onion sliced – 1 medium sized
• Urad dal – 1 tbsp
• Chana dal – 1 tbsp
• Roasted and crushed peanuts – ¼ cup
• Kadhi leaves – 10-12
• Rai (mustard seeds) – 1 tsp
• Green chili – 2 chopped
• Ghee – 2 tbsp
• Salt

Make it:
In a kadhai, or wok, heat the ghee. Using ghee renders an aromatic flavour. The taste is definitely better than oil. Do not hesitate to use ghee as small amounts of ghee are
necessary and beneficial.

When the ghee is hot add the rai, green chili, urad dal, chana dal and kadhi leaves. All these well splutter. Without allowing any of them to burn or brown add the onion.

Cook the onion till it turns light brown and has lost its moisture. Add the crushed peanuts and cook for half a minute.

Add the salt.

Mix well. The salt should be well incorporated.

Add the rawa and once again mix well.

The make-ahead breakfast is ready.

Allow this dry upma to cool. When completely cool transfer all of it into a container or Ziploc bag and store in the freezer.

When you need to prepare it measure out the amount you need into a bowl.

Heat double the quantity of hot water and pour onto the dry upma. So if you take one
cup of cooked dry upma you need two cups of hot water.

Stir once and cover.

Wait for five minutes and your breakfast is ready.

Easy? Very easy! And you can give yourself a pat on your back for preparing a healthy breakfast in just two simple steps.

You can also measure out individual serving sizes and store. Small glass containers are excellent for this purpose.